


you push & you pull (i crept up in you & i wouldn't let go)

by possibilist



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, punk!carmilla appears, so also Tarik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 02:15:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2796020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>five times carmilla makes laura beg.</p><p>'You debate waking Carmilla up and tugging her to your bed, but instead you just grab your yellow pillow and your quilt and bring them back downstairs, turn down the fire a little bit, and snuggle up next to her. Her eyelashes are long and you brush aside her bangs and marvel at the fact that she’s here, that she loves you, that she’s survived wars and coffins, that she remembered snow. Her skin dances golden and shadowed and bright in the flames.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	you push & you pull (i crept up in you & i wouldn't let go)

**you push & you pull (i crept up in you & i wouldn’t let go)**

.

_you were young & you’d start / with a reverence unincurred / there was an echo far & faint / beneath the air remained / you were young & you’d stare / where my limbs hung far & fair / make a ladder of what folds & climb up in me_  
—purity ring, ‘push pull’

//

1

When you get back from your weekly dinner friend-date with LaFontaine, Carmilla is shrugging into a leather bomber jacket—of course—and then rummaging under her bed. You’re staring at her ass—whatever—and she doesn’t even turn around before husking, “Enjoying the view, buttercup?”

You immediately huff and walk fully into the room, drop your bag onto your bed.

She stands up triumphantly with—apparently—an unopened bottle of vodka with a grin, although there are dark circles under her eyes; when you’d finished fighting the mushrooms and you’d come back, she’d curled up into this tiny ball and closed her eyes, completely stopped breathing. You’d left her alone after she very gruffly told you to  _fuck off, Laura_ , after you’d tried to ask her what was wrong.

“Is there a party or something tonight?” you ask.

She shrugs, putting the bottle in her bag. “Or something.”

“You realize we have a lot of research to do, right?”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

You eye her warily, and she just turns without another word and traipses out the door.

You end up getting a few decent hours of sleep, but before the sun is sneaking up, you wake up with a nervous, coiling pit in your stomach and, no matter how much you try to tamp it down, you can’t; you call LaF and immediately apologize to them, but explain yourself as best you can. They tell you they’ll be right over, and they are, and you head out to check a few places where Carmilla might be.

You split up: you take the astronomy tower and they take the library rooftop, because really, those are your best guesses, and you’re 427 stairs up, begging to many, many gods you don’t believe in,  _Please let her be okay, please let her be okay_ , winded so much you might puke, when you get a text from LaF:  _she’s here, completely hammered but seemingly okay, I guess. I’ll stay with her until you get here._

You text back your thanks quickly and then walk down the stairs as quickly as you can, grumbling about your useless roommate and your even more useless care for her, and you walk across campus to the library. 

Luckily for you, the library has a questionable-but-working elevator, which you take without hesitation and then climb a few stairs to the roof, open the door.

But you actually hear them talking, and LaF’s voice is solemn, and you see Carmilla’s small, solemn dark outline leaning toward them in a way that actually looks attentive. 

Either they don’t hear you or Carmilla just doesn’t care, but you kind of stop yourself, because Carmilla won’t talk to you but she’s talking to LaF, so you sit down behind a gigantic vent and listen.

“It’s like, I know I’m not a boy,” LaF says, and Carmilla nods, “but I know I’m not a girl too.”

“A third space,” Carmilla slurs quietly. “I don’t understand like you but—I understand.”

It hits you that she probably does, more than most people—creatures—would be able to. 

“Yeah,” LaF says.

“Mine is desolate,” Carmilla says, and you  _swear_ you see her wipe tears before she tucks her knees to her chest and rests her chin on them. “It’s absent, you know, and like, I just—it was  _seventy years_.”

LaF doesn’t ask what in the  _world_ Carmilla is talking about, only asks, “Was it—we kept you tied up?”

Your heart sinks, because— _god_ , but then Carmilla laughs a little, bitterly, but with a hint of lightness. “The mushrooms,” she says, “explosions.”

LaF says, “Gotcha,” and Carmilla drops her face to her knees.

They sit back, then, stretch out their legs, and say, “The third space thing?”

“Yours isn’t desolate,” Carmilla says, then raises her eyes. “The world is in binaries but that’s because it’s limited, but your third space is really full, and—if it means anything, I don’t think binaries should be the way the world is.”

You want to blatantly ignore how  _sweetly_ she says it, but LaF very gently, slowly, reaches out to take Carmilla’s hand. “You’re 334 years old, so, yeah, it means something.”

Carmilla shrugs and says, “Cool. And it’s they/them, right?”

“Yeah, thanks,” LaF says, with a solemness that makes your chest ache.

“Of course,” Carmilla says, and they’re quiet for a while before Carmilla admits, in a voice that is  _oh so eighteen_ , “I’m scared of the dark. I was going to jump because I’m scared of the dark and I know it won’t kill me and it hurts so much I stop thinking of the dark and sometimes I’m just so, so scared that none of this is real and I’m still in that coffin and it’s all a dream I’ve made up and that one day—”  She takes a ragged breath and you wipe tears from your eyes, because that’s the most you’ve ever heard Carmilla say at once, and  _god_ — “It’s just that—jumping is real, landing is real, my bones still break. But, also, um, no one has ever come to look for me before.”

LaFontaine is quiet for a minute, and then they say, “I’ve wanted to jump a few times too.”

Carmilla nods, and then she says, “Someone came to look for you?”

LaF says, “Always.”

“Makes it real in a different way,” Carmilla admits, uncurling.

“The best kind of real, I think,” LaF says.

“Whatever,” Carmilla says, and you catch LaF smile before standing and helping Carmilla up. 

“No jumping, then, yeah?”

“I’m too tired anyway,” Carmilla says, then yawns for extra emphasis.

You scramble back to the door when they start walking in your direction, because that’s not your conversation to save, and you pop out just as they’re a few feet away. 

“God, creampuff, dramatic entrance much?” Carmilla slurs, and up close she smells like vodka and the woods and cinnamon and lavender, and it’s kind of beautiful, and LaF rolls their eyes and follows her inside, holding up the almost-empty bottle of vodka.

“She can drink, I’ll give her that,” they say, and no one ever mentions that Carmilla reaches for your hand on the way back to the dorm, but you’ll remember always: the desolation, the non-binaries, the in-betweens, the fullness: it is neither day nor night, light nor dark, and the sky is the color of a bruise, hydrangeas in the rain, jazz, breath.

//

2

You’re at your dad’s for Christmas—or, as you’d made sure to make clear to him,  _the holidays_ , because you’d found out that Carmilla is actually Jewish, and the night before she’d cooked for you, lit candles, explained the prayers, and you think your dad absolutely  _loved_ it—but today your entire family is coming over, and, really, you’re pretty excited: you absolutely love your grandparents, and your dad’s sister and her husband are awesome, and, while you’re pretty sure your cousin William may or may not think you’re possibly the  _least_ cool person on the planet—he’s sixteen, so whatever—you’re kind of fond of him too.

You hadn’t really planned for Carmilla to meet  _all_ of them, but she’d had nowhere else to go, and you weren’t about to leave her by herself for the holidays—Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever.

You’re putting some cookies on a platter when you hear some voices from the living room, and you bustle out, but not before you see William  _definitely_ hit on Carmilla for a second. You’ve never come out to your aunt and uncle and cousin, or your grandparents, mainly because you just didn’t really have a reason to yet, and you really only saw them at holidays, but you know they won’t really care. 

Carmilla, however, looks extremely uncomfortable in this really cute way, and she’s wearing her grumpy cat holiday sweater you’d gotten her—she’d put it on without too much grumbling, even—and you walk up beside her and take her hand and tug a little, and when she turns toward you, you kiss her simply, and you feel her smile for a second before you pull away.

Your aunt is grinning and your uncle is nodding and your cousin is wide-eyed, and then you say, “Everyone, this is my girlfriend Carmilla,” and then you end up giving your aunt a tight hug, then your uncle, and out of the corner of your eye, you see your aunt giving a hesitant Carmilla a hug too. 

They bustle in with their presents and put them under the tree, then make your way into the kitchen to talk to your dad, and you lead Carmilla to the couch by the fireplace. William follows—and you don’t miss the brief flash of grief in her eyes when he’d introduced himself—but when he says, kind of awed, “Laura, you are, like,  _way_ cooler than I ever gave you credit for, because Carmilla is  _hot_ ,” Carmilla laughs—a real, lovely laugh—and kisses your cheek, laces your fingers.

She’s not nearly as polite with Will as she’s been with your dad—thank  _god_ , because it was weird—and when he asks her why she’s dating you, she rolls her eyes and deadpans, “She’s just  _great_ with her hands.”

You immediately  _know_ you turn bright red, and Will is gaping—Carmilla has blatantly refused to sleep with you; you kiss  _all the time_ , and you get to the point where you try to get your hands underneath her pants or leggings or boxers before she tugs on your wrists and pushes you back with a sad little smile.

You’d made you both make a list of yes/maybe/no’s for both of you—pretty much as soon as you’d started kissing  _for real_ —and she’d shyly written a substantial amount of  _no_ ’s after you'd told her the point was to be safe, not embarrassed or guilty, which had broken your heart a little bit, because they had to do with remnants of physical abuse and space, and you don’t even know if you’ll ever be able to ask her what had happened in her lifetime; you know you’ll never be able to understand.

But despite Carmilla being absolutely surprisingly chaste with you, she is  _not_ implying that with Will right now, cracking on sex joke after another, and, apparently, your incredibly educated girlfriend is, in fact, a sixteen year old boy.

“ _Oooookay_ ,” you say, after Carmilla flashes a  _very_ inappropriate position of her fingers with one hand, and  _thankfully_ , your grandparents walk in just then, and you’re startlingly relieved when she straightens up and smiles at you sweetly, whispers in your ear, “Don’t worry, I’ll behave.”

You hope she’s telling the truth, and you and Will stand, Carmilla trailing behind a little bit, to give your grandparents hugs and kisses.

They remark on how tall Will has gotten—as always—and you hear Carmilla snicker because you haven’t really grown since you were fourteen, so they definitely don’t say that about you, but then they tell you that you’re even more beautiful, and Carmilla steps forward with this sweet, genuine smile on her face.

“Who’s this?” your grandfather asks.

You take a deep breath, and then you say, “This is my girlfriend from college, Carmilla.”

Your grandmother looks absolutely delighted and hugs you again, murmurs, “Your mother would be  _proud_ , sweetheart,” which makes you laugh.

Your grandfather offers his hand to Carmilla, who takes it and then he bows a little, brings his lips to it gently, and she grins. “Ah, chivalry,” she says, then turns toward you. “You could learn a thing or two, Laura.” You roll your eyes and tuck her into your side, and then Carmilla says, “Believe it or not, she’s actually wonderful and has taken care of me for the entire semester, so you’ve raised her well.”

That immediately wins them over entirely, and they sit down by the fireplace.

You and Carmilla sit on the floor—Carmilla manages to make wearing a grumpy cat sweater and socks with snowflakes on them while lounging on a Santa Claus quilt seem sexy, and you’re  _so_ done for sometimes, and Will goes sits on your other side.

Carmilla answers your grandfather’s first question—where she’s from—in  _perfect_ Austrian German, you’re sure, and he grins, and the three of them end up having a quick fire conversation about—as far as you can catch; your high German is getting better, but the dialects are different—German Expressionist film and the development of heart transplants? Maybe.

After a while, your father calls you both into the dining room to set the table, and Carmilla languidly wanders off with a disgruntled eye roll but no actual verbal complaints, and you’re about to follow when you’re grandmother catches your wrist and says, “She’s absolutely wonderful.”

You smile. “Yeah, she kind of is. Difficult, at times, but I love her, so.”

Your grandmother kisses your cheek and sends you off with a small, gentle push, and Carmilla is in the dining room, already sort of setting the table. Mostly she’s just walking around it, placing one single knife before going back to grab one more at a time. You roll your eyes but she turns toward you with a grin and then wiggles her eyebrows and ends up lifting a sprig of mistletoe as she steps into your space, and you roll your eyes and kiss her. 

You end up looping your arms around her neck, and one of hers is in your hair, the other drifting down your side to your hip, mistletoe entirely forgotten, and she’s about to definitely squeeze your ass when you hear a throat clear and then break apart to find your dad in the doorway, holding a bottle of wine and a bottle of whiskey.

He just looks at both of you before setting down the bottles on the table and then says, “Wash your hands before continuing,” before walking out of the room, and you were full on  _making out_ , not just sweet small pecks, and you know you’re bright red, and you tuck your head into Carmilla’s shoulder with a groan, but she just laughs and laughs. 

You do end up washing your hands and then actually setting the table, although Carmilla isn’t helpful in the slightest. Mostly she walks behind you and pretends to straighten the silverware, but really she just touches your ass as often as possible, but miraculously you don’t break anything.

And then you go up to your bedroom to change—Carmilla wears a black dress, but it’s soft and lovely and trimmed with gold, and she’s  _beautiful,_ and you only kiss her for a  _few_ minutes before heading back down, and you don’t miss Will’s swallow and how he averts his eyes—or Carmilla’s  _delighted_  laugh—when he sees her.

You sit around and watch Carmilla eat as much as your dad—which she’s been doing the entire time so far, which is actually serving to impress him—but then Will cracks some immature joke about cats and lesbians, and everyone but Carmilla scoffs, and  _then_ your grandfather tells his classic  _we didn’t have food during the war and in 1943 we spent Christmas in a bunker so we’re grateful for our family_ story, and, all of a sudden, Carmilla’s fork clatters.

She stutters an apology and then her chair shoots back and she walks as quickly as humanly possible out of the dining room, and you sigh. Your entire family looks worried, and you just say, “She’s just—I’ll go make sure she’s okay, you didn’t say anything wrong.”

You walk upstairs and you’re not surprised when you find her in your bathroom, knees to her chest, face in her hands. She’s hyperventilating, which you think is kind of ironic, because she doesn’t even need to breathe, but you sit down across from her, lean your head back against the edge of your standalone tub.

You know she knows you’re there, and so you just wait until she scrambles over to you and tugs a fistful of your dress, buries her head in your chest.

“They just  _died_  and I loved them,” she says, and you don’t know if she means her human family or Maman and Will—but probably both—and you do your best not to cry, instead raking your fingers through her pretty hair. “They died and I was—the bombs and I—I forgot Christmas and Hanukkah and I forgot snow, Laura, I—I forgot  _snow_.”

“Oh baby,” you say, as gently as you possibly can, and hold her a little tighter to you.

“They died,” she whispers. “ _I_ died.”

It hits you so hard in that moment: she did, your mother is dead too.

You’re crying too, and you just kiss the top of her head and offer no platitudes:  _you’re here now_ doesn’t take any of what happened away.

She cries for a little while longer and then straightens up, sniffles. You kiss her cheeks and then wipe her tears.

And then Will knocks on the door timidly, immediately looking incredibly apologetic when he sees that both of you have obviously been crying, and he stutters, “I just—I’m so sorry, they just sent me to check on you but I’ll—”

Carmilla sighs and you squeeze her hand before standing and leading him a little bit into your room; you know Carmilla can still hear you, but it gives her space to cry if she needs. “You didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”

He nods.

“Carmilla—um, her mother and her brother died a few weeks ago, and he was named Will, and I know you remind her of him in the best ways.”

His face falls, and you continue.

“She—she almost died too,” you say, which is as much of the truth as you can explain. “And she’s—we’re just trying to deal with those things, and—”

Immediately he just wraps you in a hug—it’s so tender and gentle and slightly unexpected and he says, “I’m so sorry.”

You suck in a breath and nod, and then you offer him a shaky smile, then walk toward the bathroom.

“Carm, baby?”

You get a ragged intake of breath in response and so you walk in.

She’s getting to her feet, and—despite the fact that she’s been crying for a solid twenty minutes now, her face looks exactly the same. “Carm?”

She stares at her shoes. “I don’t—I don’t know if I should, um—”

“Please?” you ask, very, very quietly. “They all adore you, and, you know—I know they want to get to know you more, and—when we lost my mom, you know, we weren't always this cheerful.”

Will laughs a little behind you and says, “Plus, you guys are old enough to go get drunk, and you don’t want to miss Uncle Ron drunk.”

Carmilla makes a noise between a scoff and a laugh and a little snot comes out of her nose, which she looks absolutely horrified at, but you grin and hand her a tissue and she smiles softly.

“Please?” you ask, then offer your hand.

“Fine,” she deadpans.

Will grins and pats her on the back, which she glares at him for before laughing.

“And I thought Laura being a lesbian was going to be the biggest drama of this whole thing,” he says, following you down the stairs.

You scoff and Carmilla grins, and you do end up getting drunk, and Carmilla ends up sneaking your grandparents extra port, which they let her have more of, and she spikes Will’s eggnog just a tiny bit—he thinks it’s a lot, but you saw her drop a tiny bit of whiskey in with a wink in your direction.

Eventually you all change into pajamas—Carmilla, surprisingly, owned a pair of burgundy flannel bottoms with little penguins on them, and she’s wearing those and a Silas t-shirt, and she’s sitting in front of the fire with you, sipping on some (definitely very spiked) cocoa, and your uncle is telling a story about something embarrassing you did as a child—there are a plethora of them—and she’s laughing breathily.

After a while she starts leaning further into you and you end up taking her mug and setting it down on the floor behind you, and you tell her it’s okay if she falls asleep. She nods—you can’t imagine how exhausted she is—before, instead of, like, going to your bedroom, just curls up with her head in your lap.

You remember, though:  _I’m afraid of the dark_.

So you just laugh and shrug and talk with your family a little bit longer, until they all get tired out too.

But before they go, they tell you how glad they are for you, because Carmilla seems wonderful.

“She is,” you say.

You debate waking Carmilla up and tugging her to your bed, but instead you just grab your yellow pillow and your quilt and bring them back downstairs, turn down the fire a little bit, and snuggle up next to her.

Her eyelashes are long and you brush aside her bangs and marvel at the fact that she’s here, that she loves you, that she’s survived wars and coffins, that she remembered snow.

Her skin dances golden and shadowed and bright in the flames.

/

3

You don’t actually  _see_ Carmilla put up the flyers next to Perry’s  _Winter Wonderland Welcome Back Extravaganza!: Snow People Building Contest_  brightly colored ones, but there are mostly black pieces of paper printed with a few pictures of snow people saying,  _WE PLAY IN OUR OWN FLESH!_ , and you’re pretty certain those are  _definitely_ your girlfriend’s doing.

Carmilla has been bitching about many things since coming back from your dad’s a week before the spring term starts, but most of them revolve around her being  _cold_ , which apparently she has more contempt for than the grand majority of anything in the world. 

She’s also  _refused_ to sleep with you, although you kiss  _all the time_ , and you haven’t really pressed: you don’t want to make her uncomfortable. It’s also only been three weeks, and you figure maybe Carmilla is just being proper. Or something.

So when you really want to participate in the  _Snow People Building Contest!_ with her, you can’t even withhold sex or something like that. Instead, you just calmly take down one of her gruesome flyers and walk calmly to your room, where, yesterday, she’d unceremoniously pushed your beds together while you were out getting groceries and then refused to acknowledge it.

Unsurprisingly, she’s lounging on her side of the bed, apathetically reading a  _worn_ copy of a Thomas Pynchon novel. 

You crawl onto your side and then lower her book, which she lets you with a raised eyebrow. And then you lean into kiss her, and you feel her smile.

Which makes you back up immediately and hold the flyer in her face.

“What the hell, Laura?”

“I never expected you to put that much effort into not wanting to build a snow person.”

She scoffs. “I didn’t make those.”

“Don’t lie to me, Carmilla Karnstein.”

“Fine,” she relents. “But I don’t want to do it.”

“Please,” you say, propping yourself up on an elbow close to her face, then kissing her nose, her eyebrow, her forehead, her fluttering eyelashes, her chin. “For  _me_?”

She growls and tugs you toward her and kisses you kind of ungracefully, because you flop onto her chest a little bit, and she says, “You will be the end of me, Laura Hollis.”

You grin and pop up. “I’ll go sign us up right now, then!” 

She rolls her eyes. “Seriously?”

“Be back soon, honey.”

You happily stop by Perry’s and put your names down, and she sends you back with brownies, and when you get back Carmilla is reading again, but when she sees you, she stands and rolls her eyes and takes your face in her hands and says, “You should be glad I’ve waited 334 years to kiss someone like you,” and then kisses you so softly you go weak at the knees, “because I would’ve  _never_ agreed to make ridiculous snow people otherwise.”

You grin, and the next day you bundle up—she looks ridiculous, because she has on her boots and her leather pants, which, granted, are, in fact, waterproof, and then an army green parka and a black beanie, and she steals one of your scarves, which, you’ve figured out, is her habit; you figure they smell like you and they actually do help her keep warm.

You make sure she has mittens, and you go out to the quad where Perry has marked off sections of snow and is getting ready to start a timer.

“Oh  _god_ ,” Carmilla grumbles, but you’re bursting with excitement—because this really is  _fun_ —and you squeeze her hand.

Perry shoots off an airsoft horn and Carmilla groans, but you get down on your knees and start instructing her how to make the first ball. She starts helping you roll it around with only mild complaining, but then she pats a little too hard and the entire thing just  _demolishes_.

“Goddamn it,” she says, sitting back on her heels with her hands thrown up.

You try not to laugh—super strength isn’t beneficial for snow people sculpting, apparently—while she starts to try again.

It’s four more demolished attempts—and fifteen minutes—later, that you just end up kissing her; you lay her back on the snow and kiss her for a solid two or three minutes before LaFontaine yells at you that that is  _not_ part of the contest, which legitimately makes Carmilla laugh, so you help her sit up.

Danny and one of her SumSoc sisters have managed to make, like, an entire  _family_ of a bunch of snow people—the Weasley’s, maybe?—and so you tell Carmilla, “We can make  _two_.”

She sighs and basically follows you around, crawling in the snow,  _sort of_ helping you pat the snow into place, and finally you have two misshapen and decently short snow people.

“Here, let’s make them us,” you say, and she sighs and wanders off to find stick arms.

You’d brought a few buttons and a bag of carrots, and you find brown buttons for the Carmilla snow person’s eyes, black for her midsection. You have one brown and one green for the eyes on yours, and then a mishmash of rainbow buttons that you put purposefully misaligned. 

You carefully find two nice carrots for the noses, and you’re putting some plain grey buttons for smiles when she traipses back—groaning—with four suitable twigs.

You show her how to delicately put them into the snow people as arms, and she manages to make them kind of hold hands, and as a last touch you take off your scarf and drape it around the Carmilla snow person, and she sighs and puts her mittens on the hands of yours. 

And then you laugh to yourself and break off the tips of two carrots and stick them just below the mouth buttons on the Carmilla snow person, and she raises an eyebrow and says, “Uh, excuse you?”

You grin and kiss her and say, “I love your nature, baby.”

She softens and grumbles a, “Whatever,” before jolting a little bit at Perry’s airsoft horn.

Unsurprisingly, after the judges—Kirsch and LaFontaine—deliberate, Danny’s team wins by a landslide, and Carmilla rolls her eyes so many times you’re almost worried about them.

But Perry is too excited about the whole event going perfectly that she wants to take pictures of all of the entries, which earns an, “Oh, Jesus  _Christ_ ,” from Carmilla, but then, just before LaFontaine is ‘officially’ taking a picture—you’re already smiling, you’re nothing if not prepared, after all—Carmilla looks at you softly and kisses your cheek, an arm wrapped around your waist, before turning and glaring at the camera.

LaFontaine sends you both of the pictures later, and you show them to Carmilla, who is, currently, in sweatpants and a huge cashmere sweater, trying to stay awake during  _Melancholia—_ which  _she’d_ insisted you’d watch—and complaining of frostbite.

She laughs at them, though, and you snuggle into her chest and end up only venturing out later that night to grab takeout before you eat it in bed and fall asleep early, tangled in each other.

But when you get back the next day from a newspaper meeting, there’s the first picture—where she’s kissing your cheek, and your lopsided, haphazard snow people are holding hands behind you, quietly sitting in an ornate frame on her side of the headboard.

You don’t say anything when she gets back, because you understand that there are moments of healing she never  _ever_ thought she’d get to have, and they need to be quiet and solitary sometimes.

But you go out with Perry and LaFontaine later that night to dinner and a movie, and Carmilla is legitimately  _almost_ nice.

In the middle of whatever sappy and heteronormative and overly-white romantic comedy you’d gotten dragged into—Perry liked happy endings, so you’d relented—Carmilla breaks from where you’d been making out in the back row and tells you, so solemnly, “I am so in love with you.”

It takes your breath away, and you just nod—you are too, but these are her words.

You kiss through the credits, and when she shyly takes your hand afterward, like she’s admitted something you didn’t know already, as the lights come on, and you meet up with LaF and Perry, Perry grins and LaF winks, and Carmilla rolls her eyes, and you are so, so surrounded with love.

That night you lie in bed on your back, stare at the glow-in-the-dark plastic stars you’d tacked to the ceiling in constellations after Carmilla had moved your beds. You’re alone for a bit, because Carmilla is out on a blood run, and you say, “Mom, I’m in love with a beautiful girl. And she’s very much in love with me back. She’s brave, and she makes me brave, and I make her brave—like you did with Dad, like you taught me.”

You take a deep, shaky breath and wipe a few tears.

“You’d be proud, Mom. You’d be really proud.”

//

4

Two days after you meet Tarik, Carmilla informs you that he and Danny had  _definitely_ had a seduction eyes moment when they ran into each other because of the two of you in the cafeteria the other day. You hadn’t noticed it, but the pizza was really good, so you figure you’d probably been more concentrated on that.

But after she told you, you figure it’s pretty much the  _best_ idea to set them up on a double date with the two of you.

“No,” Carmilla says, “that’s  _not_ what I meant for you to do when I told you this information.”

You laugh and kiss her cheek. “I beg to differ.”

“No,” she grumbles again, without any real malice, and she stalks out of your dorm and off to the philosophy department because apparently there was a pre-term lecture on Zizek she wanted to catch. In Slovenian. 

So whatever.

You plan a fantastic date, get Danny to agree immediately, and Carmilla reluctantly tells you that when she’d seen Tarik the night before he’d said yes too.

So now you’re lacing ice skates while Danny is already out on the rink.

Tarik is chuckling at Carmilla’s  _dramatic_ pout, and then you take her hand and tug her up.

“Come on, honey,” you say, and you expect her to be, like, totally badass, but  _apparently_ , vampires aren’t really great at ice skating, because Tarik is clinging to the wall and Carmilla steps onto the ice and promptly falls onto her ass.

You look to Danny with wide eyes and she’s already starting to grin, and you help Carmilla up and watch Tarik make it a few more shaky feet.

You’d grown up skating, even though your dad made you wear all kinds of pads and stuff, but you’re pretty good, and Danny had played hockey all the way through grade 12, so she’s amazing.

And while Tarik fares  _slightly_ better than Carmilla, who has just fallen for a second time in the span of probably a minute, he’s really not moving very much.

You help Carmilla up again and ask, “Can you really not skate?”

“Does it look like I’m falling for shits and giggles, creampuff?” she grits out, and you’re so delighted you can’t even be mad at her for being kind of a bitch.

“Here, give me your hand,” you say, and she does, and you make it about a quarter of the way around—slowly and shakily—before she’s scrambling and sprawled out on the ice again. 

“Don’t you  _dare_ laugh at me, Laura,” she says, but you can’t help it.

“How are you not good at this?”

“I don’t  _know_ ,” she says, “but I’m  _not_.”

“Obviously,” Danny says, and then points to Tarik who is about to fall over too. “This is the best day of my life,” she says.

“Oh, bite me, Lawrence,” Carmilla says, but she’s kind of small and pathetic with her legs stretched out in front of her and her hat completely askew.

Danny just laughs and skates off, and you tell Carmilla, “Hold my hands and squat down.”

She lifts a brow but does it anyway, and you pull her twice around the rink before you’re exhausted and decide to stop.

She pouts a little and then makes it a few steps before she absolutely just  _falls hard_ on her ass, and she lets out, “Goddamn it, Laura. Who the fuck in the whole fucking world thought it was a good motherfucking shit idea to put razorblades on the bottom of feet and fucking move on ice for goddamn fucking  _fun_?”

You want to laugh, but you also scold her, because, “ _Carmilla_ , there are like, hundreds of children here.”

She just rolls her eyes and scoots into the middle of the rink, sits crisscross applesauce with her chin in the palm of her hand, completely sullen.

You and Danny skate a few laps together, and Tarik has gotten marginally better, and he happily laughs at Carmilla with the two of you, and you don’t miss Danny taking his hand on their last lap together.

You go to fetch Carmilla, who looks up at you and says, “Took you long enough. My ass is fucking freezing.”

You laugh and help her up, very carefully get her to the exit without any more falling, miraculously enough.

All four of you end up going to get food afterward, and you’re stealing chips from Carmilla’s plate when Tarik leans forward and says, “So, should I tell you a fun story about this one,” he points to Carmilla, “and me during our punk days?”

“Oh god,” Carmilla says, at the same time you say, “Oh yes,” and Danny just laughs.

Tarik sits back and grins, and Carmilla immediately starts to study the tablecloth with extreme concentration. You take her hand under the table, because, from what you know, punk wasn’t really a  _good_ time for Carmilla, even though she loves Tarik.

But he makes things lighter, makes their past have these bright, glimmering moments of youth, so she nods at him and his smile grows impossibly wider, his dimples full in his cheeks.

“So, Carmilla wanted a mohawk,” he starts, and she rolls her eyes while you almost choke on your milkshake. “Which was great,” he continues, “because I figured it wouldn’t be the hardest thing to do, right? And, at this point, when we first met, her hair was longer than it is now, right?”

She nods, just slightly—but they have a little system of checks and balances set up, you’ve noticed, and Carmilla’s consent lets him continue.

“Also I had no idea what I was actually doing,” he says, and they both laugh at this point.

“That is entirely true,” Carmilla says. “The only true fact in this whole story, I’m sure.”

He doesn’t respond to that and instead goes on. “Anyway, so we just kind of, you know, haphazardly pushed her hair to one side and I had clippers and, well, let’s just say that it wasn’t exactly  _even_.”

“That is another true fact,” Carmilla interjects, eating a few fries from your plate.

Danny is kind of watching Tarik with an expression that’s even deeper than the way she used to look at you, and this is kind of the best night, because Carmilla has one ankle hooked with yours and your hand is still on her thigh.

“So, then, you know, we did the other side. And it wasn’t, like,  _terrible_ , other than the fact that, like, it was still super long in the middle, so you know, I cut that, which was pretty much an entire disaster because it was  _way_ uneven.”

Carmilla nods a little bit, smiling to herself.

“It grew out a little pretty fast and she got someone credible to fix it, but that first time, totally great, right?”

Carmilla rolls her eyes and Danny is laughing, and you’re at some weird point between absolutely amused and extremely turned on.

“When I came back to Silas,” Carmilla says, “in 1974, I’d never really, like,” she gestures around her face, “ _rebelled_ , or whatever, and when my mother saw me, she just about  _shit_ herself, she was so mad.”

Tarik bursts into laughter, and says, “Oh god, I bet. Still bagged all the ladies, though, this one. Badass image and everything.”

You feel heat creep up the back of your neck when Carmilla glances down at you with her seduction eyes. “All those virgins just  _lined up_ ,” she whispers into your ear, and it makes you shiver and a hot ache form between your legs, and distantly, you wonder how you  _ever_ thought you were straight.

“Uh, okay,” Danny says, “if you want to fuck, please at least make it  _away_ from the table.”

Carmilla gives her a glare and you just pick at a fry intently and Tarik laughs and gives Danny a dorky high five.

“I’d have paid to see all of these fashion choices,” you say, mainly because Carmilla  _still_ hasn’t slept with you yet and you are  _so horny_ right now if someone does change the subject you’re going to need to go into the bathroom and take care of things yourself.

“Believe it or not,” Tarik says, “I have pictures.”

“You do not,” Carmilla breathes, sitting forward. “You saved them?”

She doesn’t sound mad, surprisingly, mostly just,  _touched_ , and he nods. “Of course I saved them, babe.”

She smiles and shrugs, so he reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a few polaroids, and yep—there is Carmilla with a mohawk, and a leather jacket, and a white t-shirt, and a cigarette, one of her ears lined with piercings.

You like your 2014 version of Carmilla better—in a weird way she’s a mix between punk and 1990s grunge, you think—but you’re still  _absurdly_ turned on, and you find yourself laughing because it’s either that or spontaneously moan.

“Those are fantastic,” Danny says, looking at a few of Tarik and Carmilla together. “And you really are so handsome.”

He smiles—in the pictures, he’s pre-transition, so he’s thinner, with a softer jawline and without the scruff along his face that he now has. He and Carmilla are absurdly good looking in either era, though, but he even holds his smile differently now, and you realize that Carmilla isn’t the only one to have been able to access some miraculous part of their identity they thought they’d never have in these past decades.

They both smile now,  _actually_ smile, these beautiful things so different from sneers, and as they banter back and forth and you watch Danny fold a little triangle paper football and then shoot it through the field goal you make with your hands, you think life has turned out pretty cool.

You and Carmilla both leave Danny and Tarik at a corner sort of between the Summer Society and where his apartment ( _supposedly_ ) is, and Carmilla is about to say something like, “I  _told_ you so,” but instead you just tug her bottom lip into your mouth.

She immediately grants you access—even though it’s cold and you’re actually sure her ass probably does kind of hurt and she probably wants to go home—and you feel her teeth and then suck her tongue into your mouth, which makes her emit this breathy moan.

“What’s this for?” she whispers into your mouth.

“I was so turned on my those photos,” you admit, and she laughs.

“Please don’t ask me to do that again,” she says, stepping back a little bit. You laugh and lace you fingers through her long, pretty hair and tug, and she gasps and kisses you again, then mumbles, “Too much upkeep.”

You laugh and say, “I like your hair like this, don’t worry,” before you tug again.

You finally make it back to your dorm—kissing in the snow is romantic only until snot starts dripping from your nose because it’s so cold—and you get down to panties and sweaters and you entire body is so heady when Carmilla lets you palm her over her underwear.

But then she pushes you back and shakes her head, and your heart sinks and you’re  _throbbing_ , but you nod and kiss her again.

//

5

Perry had recruited you to lead an hour-long panel for new residents on sexuality, and Carmilla and LaF had  _kind of_ helped—mostly they sat beside you and let you answer the majority of the questions, although Carmilla had piped up, at one point, that she  _hates_ penises, which had made LaF burst out into laughter while Carmilla shrugged and said, “Well I  _am_ a lesbian.”

But now it’s a little mixer after the panel—which, yes, you had handled, for the most part, quite well, and Perry hand thanked you. You’re in the common room of the dorm, Carmilla’s legs draped over your lap, and she’d spiked both of your glasses of punch with aged scotch from what you’re sure is a ludicrously expensive flask, and you’re just sitting and kind of watching all of what’s going on, and it hits you that a few of the new residents are kind of looking at you in— _admiration_?

Carmilla follows your gaze and you watch her wink at a few girls staring, who immediately look away, and you swat at her arm with a laugh.

“What?” she drawls. “You’re  _my_ girlfriend, cutie.”

“Uh, I think they were looking at  _you_.”

She rolls her eyes. “Always the oblivious one, aren’t you?”

“Shut up,” you grumble, and she laughs into your collarbone.

You’re quiet for a few moments before you work up the courage to ask her, “Is it something wrong with me?”

Her brows knit together. “What?”

“We haven’t had sex,” you say. “You haven’t—I mean,  _I’ve_ wanted to, and I’m  _not_ pressuring you at all, but—why—I mean, I practically saw you sleep with, like, seventeen different girls last semester and it’s been one month, two weeks, and two-point-five days since we first kissed, and I know it’s my first time, but I don’t care about that because virginity is a weird antiquated notion, and—”

“Cupcake,” she stops you, softly, with tenderness and an undertone of a sorrow you weren’t expecting at all.

She sits up and scoots back a little bit, crosses her legs on top of the couch and turns to look at you.

“You’ve been with, like,  _thousands_  of girls,” you say quietly, not meeting her eyes, “and I know I’m not— _experienced_ , but I love you, and—”

“Laura,” she says, “Laura, look at me.”

You swallow and meet her gaze, and her eyes are wide and honest and so sad. “Just, listen, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Sex for me—it was—I  _had_ to have it. To lure girls, I  _had_ to have sex with them, and, and boys too, on occasion. Sometimes I—I didn’t want to, but it was what my mother required, and so I just learned to, I don’t know, disconnect from it.”

You heart  _sinks._

She can tell, you think, because she shakes her head. “I just—I’ve never had someone treat me the way you do. You let me write down things I didn’t want, and you made us pick safewords, and you  _haven’t_ pressured me.”

You nod, because—yeah, of course you had done those things.

She swallows and stares at her hands. “I haven’t ever had safe sex with someone I’m in love with before.”

“Oh, Carm,” you murmur, and reach out to take her hands softly between yours.

“And I know—it’s going to hurt me. Not in—it’s not a bad hurt, it’s just going to ruin me a little bit, rip all of these things open, and I just—I wanted to be ready to know I’d feel those things.” She looks up at you again, and it hits you that this is kind of Carmilla’s first time at all of this too, that she’s just a girl who fell in love, right in this moment, and it’s big and scary and something you never, despite all of your expectations, expect to find. “And believe me,” she says, then lets out a watery laugh, “I have been horny as  _fuck_ since before we even kissed, so it’s not you. You’re beautiful and sexy and so lovely.”

You feel yourself make a doubtful face, and she rolls her eyes.

She kisses you. “You’re my favorite existence ever, cupcake, and part of that is because you’re pretty.”

“Oh wow, so shallow,” you say, but—hearing that from Carmilla— _Carmilla_ , who is 334 years old and has slept with probably most of Old Hollywood—means the world to you.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” you say, and she laughs, then takes one last gulp of her spiked punch before tugging you out of your seat and toward the bathroom hallway, where she lets you pin her up against a wall and then  _kiss_ her, nip at her earlobe, scrape and suck your way down her neck.

And then she pushes off of the wall and yanks open the women’s bathroom door—it’s just a sink set in a small counter and a toilet, nothing particularly special—and then locks it quickly before kissing you again.

Her hands find their way  _quickly_ under your sweater, and she gasps into your collarbone when you squeeze her ass. She reaches up along your stomach, your ribs, palms your breasts over your bra, and you shove a thigh between hers and pull on her hair.

Her hands start to drift down your stomach, fingernails blunt and so gentle, and you push her back a little bit. “If you want to stop, we have to now,” you say, and your chest is heaving.

She takes a moment and then says, “I don’t want to stop.”

You’re just about to lose it, but you steady yourself and ask, “Are you sure? Really, really sure? Just because we talked earlier doesn’t mean you have to—”

She puts a small, elegant finger to your lips. “Laura,” she husks. “I always thought that maybe I’d take you to a fancy hotel, or at least have some champagne and candles, but I want you—right here, right now.”

You let out a puff of air and say, “Okay. Okay,” because this is, like,  _really_ happening.

“Are you sure?” she asks, so gently.

“Absolutely, like,  _please_ kiss me.”

She laughs and says, “What was that again?”

You take the collar of her flannel between your fingers and tug her toward you, and she’s smiling and open and young, and you say, “Carmilla Karnstein, I am  _begging_ you to kiss me.”

She smiles into it, and then she’s kissing down your neck, lifting your sweater over your head while you fight to get her flannel off. She’s unhooking your bra and her teeth graze your nipple, and she’s unbuttoning your jeans and dragging them down your legs. She’s sinking to her knees and dragging down your panties and she smiles up at you and then— _oh god_ , this is really happening.

You don’t really understand  _what_ exactly she’s doing—you’ve read about it, sure, but you’d kind of fantasized this for months now, and it’s real, and you can’t help but lacing your hands in her hair and tugging her closer.

But then she pulls back and looks up at you with a laugh, and she says, “I appreciate the enthusiasm, cupcake, but that’s not really proper etiquette.”

You’re  _far_ too turned on to be embarrassed, but you loosen your hands from her hair and instead clutch the countertop. You’re going to have a bruise tomorrow on your lower back from where you’re pressing into it, but you don’t care, because her  _mouth_ is doing some  _amazing_ things, and then—so  _that’s_ an orgasm.

She stands up and kisses you deeply, and you taste yourself on her tongue, and this whole experience is by far the most erotic thing you could’ve ever imagined.

She’s crying, though, and you check—“Are you okay?”

She nods and kisses you and seems entirely content to just do so, but you deepen things and bite her bottom lip daringly hard, tug it away from her mouth before taking it back into yours fully.

You pause before you unbutton her pants, but she lets out an  _oh god yes_ so you take that as solid verbal consent, and you’ve never gone down on anyone before, so you stay standing up, pressing her into the wall, and dip your hand into her panties.

She’s wet and tight and  _hot_  and you find her clit without too much difficulty, and you pause again, because your heart is racing and she’s so beautiful, her eyes skewed shut, her hands in your hair, and the  _last_ thing you’d ever want in the world is to hurt her.

“Yes,” she tells you, quietly and dripping with want and so clear, and you curl two fingers inside of her, and— _wow_. 

She gets close fast, and you think—why not? And then you’re on your knees and tasting her and oh  _god_  you might come again from just  _this_ , and how did you exist before this?

Her legs start to shake and you steady yourself with a hand to the wall, and she’s quiet, so quiet, but you feel her orgasm around your fingers, against your lips.

It’s all so beautiful, so rough and gentle, and you’re not surprised when you feel yourself start to cry.

You remember from a lot of fanfiction to help her come down from her orgasm, but you pump a few fingers slower so you can stand and kiss her.

She’s crying—like, a  _lot_ —though, and immediately you go to ask, but, “I’m okay,” she says, and then shakes her head and kisses you. You take your fingers out of her, because she’s steadier on her feet now, and she says, “I’ve—I feel eighteen,” she whispers. “I’ve just—I’m happy, and I can’t remember the last time, or if—I’ve never been this happy.”

You kiss her again, because, “Me either.”

She says, “I love you.”

“I love you too, baby.”

Then she backs up and grins and says, “Perry is going to kill us.”

You laugh wholeheartedly, because, yeah, she is, and you end up helping each other get dressed and then trying to straighten your hair—Carmilla’s is a long-gone mess at this point—before you wash your hands and then walk out of the bathroom.

Thankfully the mixer is still decently loud, and not many people look to you—except for LaFontaine, who then nudges Perry, who takes in your tear-stained face, and honestly you feel kind of blissed-out, like that one time you accidentally ate a pot brownie in grade 10, and Carmilla’s hand is firm and floaty in yours.

Perry glares and bustles over to you, and LaFontaine is  _already_ laughing.

“Did you two just  _have sex_ in that bathroom?” she whispers heatedly.

You find yourself answering, “It was completely consensual,” while Carmilla says, “I would  _never_ do such a thing,” and LaFontaine  _bursts_ into laughter while you think Perry’s eyes might bug out of her head, but you’re too content and feeling so many wonderful things you can’t even really bring yourself to care.

But then Perry looks at Carmilla, who can’t stop  _smiling_ , and she huffs, relenting. “I’m going to go get the cleaning supplies, and you’re going to make that bathroom  _spotless_  before I let you leave this party, are we clear?”

You both end up laughing and nodding, and Carmilla gets you cookies and more (spiked, heavily spiked) punch, and then it takes you an inordinately long amount of time to clean the bathroom, because you just keep  _kissing_ , but you finally do get it cleaned and Perry-approved.

Carmilla leads you by the hand up to your room, and she lays you down on your bed and  _I am so gay_  is what runs through your head before  _oh god we get to do that again, and again, and again_.

“You know,” she says, “I had meant to have candles and champagne and probably truffles or something like that, but. I’d take that bathroom over anything.”

“You taste like whiskey and stars,” you breathe, and she shakes her head.

“You, Laura Hollis—”

“Please just kiss me again.”

She does.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to angeltrouble on tumblr for all of their brilliant openness & help with LaF's dialogue. <3


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